There’s always a Range Rover… It’s a family joke, especially in the West Country, where flocks of Solihull’s finest congregate during public school holidays, blocking the roads and expensively crashing roof boxes into car park height restrictors. And I’m (not really) sorry if this is you, but it’s a common enough stereotype for a reason, skewered by the Guardian cartoonist Stephen Collins.
But this wasn’t a fictional Range Rover driver from North London who doesn’t know how to reverse; in my case it was some numpty repeatedly hooting at me in Buzz, my Honda Civic Type R, as I negotiated the narrowest of hotel multi-storey car parks at Gatwick airport. Predictably the vulnerable front spoiler caught the (invisible from the driver’s seat) course of bricks in the centre of the ramp to the accompaniment of popping clips and scraping bodywork.
I got out, stared at the damage in pure disbelief and gave the Range Rover driver my silent-killing look at which point he became engrossed in his satnav. Four hours and 250 miles later I landed in Cornwall and the following day the little Honda was parked outside Camel Panel Repairs while proprietor Rob Dongray took a dekko. Lesson one, never take your used car to a painter: they’ll see things you never even dreamed of, all the while making you feel quite fed up about life.
